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Networks promise unfettered file swapping

The fate of the free Net may rest in the hands of a university student in Sweden making less money than a coffee slinger at Starbucks. While the first generation of file-trading technologies fights over Napster’s leavings, more radical Net programmers are still committed to building a wholly anonymous, virtually untraceable way of communicating and trading files online. Chief among these is Freenet, an open-source project viewed by many as the ultimate inheritor to Napster’s original promise of free online file swapping

When the Chinese government wanted to keep its users off Facebook and Google, it blocked the entire country's access to the U.S. companies' apps and sites. And when citizens started using third-party workarounds — like Tor, proxies and VPNs...